The Third Eye
by singeivoire
Summary: Dolores Umbridge can appreciate a person who dies with their eyes open. Oneshot about the repossession of a certian magical eye. Rated T for creepiness.


Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling, and I don't own Harry Potter. Surprise, surprise.

Many thanks to my beta, waiting4morning, for paying attention to mundane things like spelling so I don't have to whilst I am in the grip of The Muse (bwahaha!).

This takes place during Deathly Hollows. Spoilers abound.

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"Madam Undersecretary. I didn't know that you were… that is to say, isn't this a tad…hm… why do you choose to give your attention to so… inconsequential a matter?" The obsequious little man fluttered around Dolores Umbridge like a frightened moth.

Dolores leveled her gaze on the medical wizard, his palpable fear soothing her. He was one of those men who compensated for baldness by growing an excessive amount of graying beard. Additionally, all his facial features seemed to crowd into the smallest possible space as if huddling for warmth on his absurdly fluffy chin. The resultant orb of cranium reflected bars of fluorescent light from the ceiling. Disgusting muggle institution. Dolores didn't know why the body had ended up here of all places.

"Are you suggesting that the Ministry doesn't take interest in the wellbeing of its employees?" Dolores halted in the hallway, planting her feet with precision. The wizard was forced to scramble to turn and face her.

"N-no. Not at all, but I understand he was no longer an employee of the Ministry..."

Dolores allowed herself a small giggle. "I think that you actually understand very little Mr. Sherbin." She shot Sherbin her broadest smile and tilted her head to one side. "He may have gone a little daft after he left the service of the Ministry, but given his... legacy at the auror's office, his death is still our concern." She nodded in an understanding manner. "Now, can you please show me to his remains? Can you do that for me?"

Sherbin's enormous forehead crinkled in a frown. "Of course, Madame Undersecretary. Of course. It's… just this way." He furled his hand down the hall.

Dolores straightened her powder pink cardigan, allowing her fingers to brush unconsciously over the locket at her throat. She stepped forward to continue the trek down the hallway.

The last fluorescent light before the door was apparently malfunctioning. A sputtering hum was coming from the contraption, and the bulb's indecision cast a patch of flickering darkness just before the entrance to the room of death—the "MORGUE" as the sign indicated. The buzz and the flicker were bothersome—no, they were infuriating. They made Dolores' molars ache with irritation. She paused in front of the door and bent her neck as if removing a crick.

"Madam Undersecretary?" Sherbin paused again, hand on the door handle, and gave her a worried glance.

"Have patience, Mr. Sherbin. It's a virtue." Dolores pulled her wand from her purse and pointed it at the ailing light fixture. After a precise wave, the light brightened, straightened up. In fact, it shone a little brighter than the other bars of light down the hall. Dolores lowered her wand and squared her shoulders.

Inside the morgue, there was a young muggle woman in a white coat, chewing gum behind the desk. She stood when they entered, but continued smacking as she talked. "You must be here for that _crazy_ John Doe we just got in." Her voice was nervous, and she fidgeted as she spoke. "The front desk said you were coming down. I don't know how you got here so fast – the police are on their way, we'll just wait for them and you can make your identification – the body was only dropped off a few minutes ago…"

Not bothering to turn toward the muggle, Dolores interrupted the flow of smacking chatter. "Where is he?"

"Oh, he's over—" The woman pointed toward a sheet-draped form on their right. But before she could finish her sentence or follow it up with another, Dolores shot a spell toward the yammering muggle. She fell with a great clatter and smack against the polished tile floor, her limbs splayed in a manner that would have been licentious were it less awkward. Dolores smiled again and caressed the locket at her neck.

"Madam Undersecretary! Was it really necessary to do that?" Sherbin forgot to keep the shocked note out of his voice at first. Dolores pursed her lips and turned to look at him. The fuzzy little man rushed to arrange the muggle more politely but was stopped by the undersecretary's cough.

"Hem-hem."

He paused and gave Dolores his attention.

"Leave her. Lock the door, please, Mr. Sherbin." She heard him scramble to do her bidding. Dolores turned toward the draped form. With a precise flick of her wand, the sheet flew back to reveal the battered torso of one Alastor Moody, ex-auror.

As Dolores had long suspected, the man's scars did not stop at his face. His broad, grizzled old man chest was a mess, crisscrossed with gashes and gouges. Patting absently at her hair, Dolores stepped forward for a closer look. There were a couple of new cuts along the man's neck and cheek, but the cause of death was obvious. The killing curse had been used. An expression of grim terror seemed to pull at the old scars, creating what looked like a rubber fright mask.

Someone had closed Moody's eyes, though. Most likely some muggle had been unsettled by the man's uneven stare. Moody would never have died with his eyes shut. His eyes were always open. That was at least one thing she could still appreciate about the man, though it hadn't served him well in the end. He had begun to see things that weren't there. His alertness was marred by mania. And as the disorganization chipped away at his mind, Dolores mused, it seemed to chip away at his exterior as well. The scars that covered his body were a tangled roadmap of the psyche within – filled with dead ends and roundabouts that led nowhere. What a disgusting waste of a once-precise intellect.

Of all the outward signs of inward insanity, that eye was the most distressing. It could see everything, but it couldn't focus or define. It always seemed infused with a kind of kinetic madness. Before Moody had been removed from the ministry (and rightly so) she had often sensed that eye seeing her; sensed the mind behind it taking what was seen and twisting it.

Dolores stared at the bulging right eye socket. There was no movement from under the eyelid. Perhaps the magic of the eye died with the wizard.

Dolores prodded the corpse with the end of her wand. The magical tip sizzled as it touched his hoary skin. She pressed a little harder and the sizzling intensified. Dolores pulled back the wand, noting the small circular burn on the man's ribs, and stared for a moment. It was more time than she allowed herself to make most decisions.

She placed one hand gingerly on the right eye socket then drew back swiftly. She could have sworn she had felt a twitch of movement under her fingers. Resolutely stowing her wand inside her purse, Dolores used both hands to pull open the eyelid. It was harder to open than she anticipated, as if the fleshy oyster of eyelid was reluctant to hand over the bizarre pearl within. This wasn't rigor mortis; it seemed more like the lingering stubbornness of a madman present in the memory of dead muscles. Or perhaps like the eye itself intended to stay hidden. Crushing long grey lashes between her fingertips, Dolores pried until the eye beneath was revealed.

The violent blue iris was almost entirely hidden, floating next to his tear duct. Dolores giggled a little at the cross-eyed wink that Moody was now giving her only to grow suddenly solemn with resolve. This time, as she touched the surface of the eye, it definitely spasmed, the blue iris fleeing into the back of the corpse's head as if checking to see if Moody was being tailed.

By now, Sherbin had finished with the door and was standing over her shoulder watching the proceedings. "What are you _doing?_" The wizard sounded afraid and disgusted.

"Let's just call this… a salvage operation, shall we, Mr. Sherbin?" Dolores had to use both hands to grasp the eye: it was too large for her short fingers and it was really thrashing against her touch now. Eventually, with a comical little pop, the eye jumped free of the socket. She drew her hands back, and looked at the blue eye. It was still for a moment but then began to quiver. The vibrating grew more intense, and Dolores could feel a grin spread across her face as the vibrating turned to a slow spinning.

Dolores felt an entirely new awareness blossom in her consciousness. It was like getting struck in the nose with the pungent smell of unfamiliar food cooking, or like hearing music at a whole new frequency, or, well… like the unlidding of a third eye.

She could see everything with icy blue clarity, flying past her attention in an unruly jumble. The pores on Sherbin's nose, the fact that he had righted the muggle's position against her request, the fine text on the tag on Moody's concealed toe—"John Doe," the men in uniforms three floors up that were talking with a receptionist, the light outside the door that had started flickering again… It was so easy to see the details, and they came at her at such a pace, that Dolores began to feel dizzy. The eye spun faster.

And then, in her new sight, she could see herself: every hair in place; wide, perfectly painted smile fixed; the sinuous "S" on her locket gleaming with unknowable green flames under the institutional lighting. She could see herself watching herself, and she could see her own smile deepen at the recognition.

She stood there, exchanging stares with the eye for a moment longer. Soon, the eye began to spin again. As the eye's focus slipped off of her, she noticed that a curl at the base of her neck was beginning to frizz. She saw that the bow on her head would come undone if she were to get caught in a stiff wind. Worse, the gleam of the locket seemed smudged and deformed somehow when seen from the corner of the eye.

Dolores clasped the eye between her hands and squeezed it to a halt. The eye quivered in her grip, but she just applied more pressure.

"Settle down, now," she murmured in sweet, coaxing tones. The quivering subsided reluctantly, and the eye was still. Dolores cradled it into her purse and closed the clasp.

Dolores glanced over at Sherbin. He was staring at the corpse, specifically at the empty eye socket. Dolores cleared her throat and waited till she had his full attention.

"I'm going now; very important ministry business to get back to, you understand." She simpered. "There are some muggle authorities making their way down here now. I trust you can take care of this situation?"

Sherbin blinked rapidly and his jaw began to form a syllable, but Dolores cut him off by turning away. She moved back toward the entrance, being sure to kick one of the muggle's legs aside as she passed. Glancing around the room, she made sure things were in order. Pulling out her wand, she shot a spell at the flickering bulb in the hallway, dousing the light entirely. Satisfied, Dolores reached up and tightened her hair bow, before turning back to Sherbin. Flashing the wizard one last smile and placing a protective hand on her purse, Dolores turned on the spot and disapparated.

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A/N: **Oh my word**, something must be wrong with me. I'm going to go find a therapist now…

Feedback, people--let me know what you think!


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